


The Scottish Brigade at Waterloo

by plumedy



Category: Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crack, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Shrinking, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:50:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5096345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. We can’t all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.”</p><p>Not every battle has to be the battle of Waterloo.</p><p>Inspired by <a href="archiveofourown.org/users/MrsHorowietzky">MrsHorowietzky</a>'s <a href="http://thedarkbeginnings.tumblr.com/post/118626790396">beautiful art</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scottish Brigade at Waterloo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MrsHorowietzky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsHorowietzky/gifts).



> This work is also known as "I love the fact that AO3 has the Original Cat Character tag".

This was a narrow escape - had the Doctor landed a couple of inches to the left, he’d have certainly missed the cat’s back and fallen straight to the floor; as it was, he flopped onto the fur next to me and held tight onto Thistle’s collar.

I noticed now that he was soaked through. Indeed, water was dripping from his hair and his clothes, and I could feel Thistle’s skin twitch under us in response to this unexpectedly wet and cold burden. A smart cat as he was, he was already heading to the fireplace, his claws tapping slightly against the wood.

“No!” I said, reproachfully. “You haven’t been dragging the bees out of that puddle again!”

“I’ll have to put some stones into it soon,” responded Bell. “There will be more rains in November; the bees will start getting trapped there on a regular basis.”

Thistle stood in front of the fire and then started settling down slowly, mindful of our presence on his back. Even so, Bell had to grab my arm to stop me from sliding down - the cat was well fed and very clean, which gave his grey fur a glossy smoothness that often made it hard to ride him.

“These things are dangerous,” I frowned. “Have you no care for your safety? Such an amount of poison could kill you instantly.”

“Nonsense,” Bell waved his hand cheerfully. “They’re exceptionally peaceful animals and will never bite if one doesn’t provoke them. After all, a bite costs a bee its life.”

I shot him a doubtful look, but refrained from any further comment. For a while he sat in silence, waiting for his clothes and hair to dry; I could see the small curls on the back of his head perk up in a sort of fluffy halo.

At last he carefully slid to the floor and extended a hand to me.

“Care for some tea, Doyle?”

I did, but accepting his help to get down from Thistle’s back was rather beneath my dignity - even if between the two of us, he was the taller one. I ended up ignoring his outstretched hand and gracelessly flopping on the floorboards. I cannot be sure, but I think he grinned at that; he certainly didn’t seem upset.

We walked towards the pretty gold-rimmed teacups Mrs Williams had left out for us, and Bell hopped nonchalantly onto the blue iris-pattern porcelain handle. I had to admit he’d adapted to his new height remarkably well, and seemed perfectly at ease stirring the sugar in his cup with a silver spoon twice his size. I was less adept at that, and so I took my tea without sugar, which I compensated by having Mrs Williams mix it with generous amounts of milk and brandy.

I sat on the handle of my own cup, feeling the hot delicious-smelling steam wash over me. Everything about that evening felt idyllic - everything, that is, apart from the fact that I was approximately thirty-six times smaller than normal.

“And you’re saying that we’ll remain like this for another week?” I enquired somewhat testily.

“Mrs Williams doesn’t seem to mind,” responded Bell, throwing me a piece of cream biscuit as big as my head. I just managed to catch it, thanks to my experience at rugby.

“What an admirable attitude,” snorted I, “it rather reminds me of one anecdote I heard about Wellington at Waterloo.”

Bell deigned that with a look of curiosity.

“Lord Uxbridge,” I continued, vindictively, “was riding alongside Wellington when a cannonball whizzed by and wounded him in his left leg.

“’My God, Sir,’ cried Uxbridge, looking down, ‘I have lost my left leg!’

“‘My God, Sir,’ Wellington responded, emotionless, ‘you have.’”

If I hoped to insult him, I failed miserably; he was laughing so heartily I feared he might fall into his tea.

“The fact that being compared to Wellington is pure flattery quite aside,” he said, “I take it that you’re Lord Uxbridge in this scenario, my dear Doyle? I have to say you do not seem so terribly distressed.”

Of course, he was right: the truth was that I was not. For, even despite the occasional dangers, there was a solidity and an uneventfulness about the world we had found ourselves in. Indeed, a part of me relished this chance to get away from my troubles and responsibilities - if only for a couple of weeks.

“And you’ve reproached me for helping the bees,” said the Doctor with a smile, “but who was it that insisted on catching that mouse and fixing its broken leg? I happened to notice that its teeth were impressively sharp.”

Seeing that I was about to sulk, he jumped down from his cup and closed the distance between us.

“Come, Doyle,” he said pacifically, “don’t mind me. Let’s go back to Thistle; I would appreciate some more of your Waterloo stories.”

I got down and let him lean against me. He still had not found a suitable replacement for his cane, and, though he could be very adroit all the same, his bad leg would sometimes hurt from all the jumping and climbing. All my remonstrations were, quite naturally, in vain; Bell was insatiable to study every little detail of our surroundings in hopes of discovering something he might have overlooked from his normal height. Only yesterday he’d blabbered to me happily about the curious properties of different kinds of dirt found between the floorboards.

Thistle had evidently been worried by our prolonged absence, because he greeted us with thunderous purring.

“There, there,” I said, patting his ribs and stretching my legs towards the fire. I felt rather than saw the Doctor settle beside me at a distance he judged to be polite.

“Didn’t one of your grand-uncles lead the Scottish brigade?” he asked.

“Sir Dennis Pack,” nodded I. “Quite the charming man he was, too. ‘The Devil break the gaoler’s back who let thee loose sweet Dennis Pack,’ as the rhyme ran.”

That got a laugh from him.

“This explains something about your hot-headedness, Doyle.”

“Hardly,” objected I. “Or else the whole of the 42nd Highlanders had taken after him. My mother used to tell me of one soldier who had such a volatile temper that he once threw a cat at the parson of the village where they were stationed.”

“Charming,” the Doctor commented sleepily. “One wonders why it is that our victory came at such a great cost.”

For a brief moment I debated with myself as to whether he might object to me putting an arm around his shoulders, but he was so obviously worn out and in danger of falling off the cat that I didn’t have much choice.

To my considerable astonishment, he responded by putting his own arm around me. Unsure how conscious he was of this gesture, I thought it best to maintain my distance; this resulted in a rather awkward arrangement, but I found that I did not mind this awkwardness.

“I wonder if _you_ had any eccentric ancestors who liked to conduct strange experiments with mind-boggling results,” I murmured.

“My great-grandfather, Benjamin Bell, made one of his patients smoke opium before an operation,” came a groggy answer. I myself was yawning; the Doctor registered that and tightened his grip on me, apparently out of considerations similar to mine. We were close now and I felt him laugh noiselessly. “He hoped to numb the man’s pain, and succeeded at it, too. The unexpected side effect was that Dr Bell’s patient hallucinated so vividly that till the end of his days he remained convinced that his leg had been torn off by a giant octopus. Started quite a rumour among the Edinburgh sailors.”

“Perhaps this experiment of yours wasn’t such a bad thing after all,” I said at length.

“Perhaps,” agreed he. I was not sure that at this point he was entirely clear on what he was agreeing with.

I stared into the fire, blinking. My tiredness was slowly getting the better of me; and Bell seemed to be long asleep, when suddenly I felt him stir. I turned to him in surprise. He was frowning at some thought of his, his hand moving restlessly over Thistle’s rich ashen fur.

“Of course, the whole experiment is nonsense,” he murmured ruefully. “I should be doing something important instead. It isn’t like there aren’t enough crimes in this city to last me a lifetime.”

That was a dramatic change from his earlier cheerful attitude, and I was a little worried by it. It was clear to me he wasn’t quite awake; perhaps this was one of those irrational anxieties that come to us from our dreams. Indeed, from the looks of it he was dozing off again, though there was still a vague air of misery about his expression.

I waited until he went limp, and put my second arm around him.

“No,” I said quietly. “This is important. It’s important that the bees will no longer drown in that puddle on our windowsill, and that the mouse’s leg doesn’t hurt, and that Mrs Williams is making an apple pie for breakfast.”

The Doctor was quite unable to appreciate the wisdom of my statement; his head was lying on my shoulder, his tangled white hair hanging over his face. But it seemed to me that his breathing grew quieter and more even.

I carefully put him down, rose, and dragged him farther onto Thistle’s back. Inconveniently, even when reduced to one thirty-sixth of his normal height, he still seemed entirely too tall, and Thistle was barely big enough to accommodate him.

I lay beside him. Thistle was purring in a steady, barely audible monotone. After a while I reached out and put my hand on the Doctor’s shoulder - a funny, helpless protective gesture that could protect nobody. And yet it was enough to comfort me.

The fire in the fireplace was dying out, now little more than a soft red glow, and it seemed as though the whole world smelt of apple pie.


End file.
